


Every flower (blooms in its own time)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Flowers, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Oblivious Evan "Buck" Buckley, buck's pranks are silly and harmless and nobody really gets them, christopher and maddie and chimney and hen all make a brief appearance, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29988018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: “What is this?” a familiar voice asks from the other side of a circular wall of flowers.Buck lowers his gift so he can actually see Eddie’s face over top of it and Eddie can see him grin. “Flowers. Surprise.”Or: Buck brings Eddie flowers (weekly), but it’s totally just a joke (unless it isn’t). (Other people seem to think that maybe it isn’t. (They’re wrong. Obviously.))
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Comments: 20
Kudos: 489





	Every flower (blooms in its own time)

**Author's Note:**

> This doesn’t have any strong links to canon time-wise (except that it’s obviously not a season 1 fic), so situate it where you will. The title is a bit of Pinterest wisdom.

It’s a Saturday and Buck’s not working, so he spends it on Eddie’s couch, as he did with his last four free weekends. They just finished up an intense Mario Kart tournament that in the end went between Eddie and Christopher, which Chris won because Buck – totally by accident! he swears! – blocked Eddie’s field of vision as he was getting up to get a glass of water. Chris cheers, Buck cheers with him, Eddie grumps a bit but is too amused and proud to make his complaints convincing, and then Chris gets up and speeds off on his crutches the same way his Yoshi did in the game, yelling something about claiming the last chocolate chip cookie that the winner was promised.

Buck is feeling happy and relaxed, and that doesn’t change when Eddie turns off the Wii and asks, “Hey, wanna stay over? Chris wants you here for Sunday pancakes tomorrow morning and it’ll save you the drive back and forth.”

Buck stretches his arms along the couch and feels a little happier still. It’s not even a question of whether he’ll show up for breakfast or not, just of where he’ll sleep. Even that matter, honestly, is more of a formality at this point. “That’d be great, if your couch isn’t tired of having me yet.”

Eddie bumps Buck’s shoulder with a closed fist. Not hard, just a nice warm contact. “Don’t worry, I think it likes you.” Buck is not going to argue with that – he likes being liked by the Diaz household, whether it’s humans or furniture – so he just sits there, on the couch he’s been sleeping on every Saturday night for four free weekends in a row, and watches as Eddie gets up to put the controllers away. Eddie sits back down next to him and leans back, and it’s a comfortable moment of quiet, that is broken only when Eddie glances at him and asks, “Do you ever think that we’re basically dating?”

The world shakes a little as Buck’s peaceful bubble goes _pop_. “What?” He opens his mouth to say more confused things, snaps it closed, and reevaluates the last few months of his life. This is the problem with having next to no experience with real adult relationships: he missed every single sign. He has his arm over the back of the couch, but it’s inches from being draped over Eddie’s shoulders _right now_. “Oh my God.”

Eddie’s grin is a little wry. All things considered, that’s a kind response, because Chimney would be laughing openly at Buck at this point. “Hey, don’t worry. This doesn’t mean you have to start buying me flowers now.”

Buck has something to say to that. He’s pretty sure he does, anyway, even if he can’t figure out yet what it is.

He never gets to put that together, because they’re interrupted by Christopher. He found not only the cookie but also an entire bar of chocolate, and draws Eddie into a hopeful negotiation about what a worthy prize for Mario Kart triumph looks like, in terms of sugar content. Eddie is distracted, the previous topic is dropped, and it’s all good. 

It’s not like Buck has a mind that tends to get a little fixated on a new idea without telling him, or anything.

*

The thing, you see, is that right around this same time they start carpooling into work on Mondays. It makes sense: there’s a gym Buck goes to that’s not too far from Eddie’s place. By very mildly lying about his usual workout schedule he gets to drive Eddie to work one day a week, which is way more fun for both of them, comes with free coffee because he refuses to take gas money from Eddie, and keeps one more car off the crowded LA streets. It’s a win-win all around.

It turns into even _more_ of a win, though, when Buck spots the cute little flower shop that he passes on the drive from his gym over to Eddie’s.

He’s seen it before and he’s always wanted to take a look around, but he’s never had any reason to go in. Besides, it’s a small place, owned by the woman that personally puts together the bouquet and gives him his change, and he had a talk with May recently about the importance of supporting local businesses, so he’s just making well-reasoned, ethical decisions.

That’s why he feels pretty good about himself when he presses Eddie’s doorbell. He feels even better when the door opens and he can’t even see Eddie’s face, because the bouquet is too big.

“What is this?” a familiar voice asks from the other side of a circular wall of flowers.

Buck lowers his gift so he can actually see Eddie’s face over top of it and Eddie can see him grin. “Flowers. Surprise.”

Eddie looks from Buck to the flowers and back again. “For me?” he asks, like he’s genuinely checking. He doesn’t seem put off, but he probably didn’t expect to be greeted by a very extravagant yet tasteful grouping of yellow lilies, orange gerberas, blue irises and a touch of red roses, which is fair enough.

Buck shrugs. “Well, if you don’t want them-”

Eddie’s laugh is confused, but glorious. He rubs his mouth and if he’s trying to fight a smile, it’s not working. “No, that’s alright. Uh, hang on and let me find a vase for those.”

Eddie’s departure deeper into the apartment reveals Christopher, standing a few feet from the door. “Why did you bring us flowers?” he asks, coming closer on his crutches.

Buck drops to a crouch so he’s level with Chris and both of them can admire the flowers from above, which is by far the best view. “It’s a joke between me and your dad. You like ‘em?”

Chris touches the petal of what Buck learned just this morning to be a yellow lily, careful to feel, but not harm. “They’re beautiful.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Buck says, grinning in a way that’s going to make his cheeks hurt if he keeps it up, but that he doesn’t know how to stop. He feels maybe a little more of a warm glow than a silly prank that cost him eighty dollars should usually bring.

*

So he does it again. It was good the first time – it made Eddie laugh, Christopher liked it, Buck felt inexplicably light for the entire rest of the day – so why mess with success? 

Besides, if there is one thing Evan Buckley has adopted as a new character trait these past few years, it’s persistence. There’s no reason to let go of that just because he’s not really sure what the hell he’s doing. As long as he doesn’t stop to think about it, he doesn’t have to examine whether any of this is weird, and that means he can just enjoy the fruits of his floral investments for the time being.

And even if he _were_ thinking about it, he’s pretty sure all that effort would be rendered moot by the time Eddie opens his door exactly one week after Buck brought him the first bouquet, because again, Eddie laughs. Buck has never before in his life realized that he’s rarely heard a certain sound and felt this heartbroken and simultaneously delighted about it.

*

So maybe he does it a third time.

*

And a fourth.

*

And a… sixth? He’s kind of losing count, but Eddie has lately had a vase ready and waiting on the kitchen counter every Monday morning, so he can’t stop now.

*

Maddie is of a different opinion. Maddie, when Buck makes the mistake of laughingly telling her about this really funny in-joke while he has her over for dinner, looks skeptical and a little suspicious, which is not at all the vibe Buck was going for.

“The first few times, okay,” she says, while she’s tossing the salad with the dressing. “I know you’re the type of person to get really into to your strange practical jokes, because I remember that week when you slipped food coloring into every single dinner mom cooked us.” Buck hasn’t thought about that in years, but he reigns in his chuckles at the memory of blue mashed potatoes and hot pink rice when Maddie gives him a stern look over the salad. “But by now, you’re still buying huge bouquets every week? Are you budgeting for this?”

Buck steals the salad out from under her nose. It’s fine by now. It needs to get to the table, which conveniently also gets him an excuse to walk away. “Come on, our pay is not that bad.”

“No,” Maddie says, trailing him with the salad spoons, “but flowers are expensive.”

Buck’s never cared about money that much. He knows what it’s like to not have it and how much that sucks, but he’s at a point in his life where he can comfortably cover all his bills, so there’s no reason not to use what’s left to enjoy life. “It’s worth it,” he tells Maddie, and doesn’t really dwell on how much that sounds like he’s saying Eddie is worth it, because yeah, obviously. That’s not even a question that needs answering.

He puts the salad on the table.

“Uh huh,” Maddie says, and Buck decides not to read anything into that either, so that’s the end of that conversation.

*

Having someone from outside comment on what he’s doing makes him think about what exactly that is just a little bit, though. Not enough to stop him, or to really make him reflect on whether a customized throw-away decoration bought as a gag gift is really something he should be dropping between fifty and a hundred bucks on every week for an extended period of time, but _just_ enough to make him a little nervous when he rings the doorbell for the seventh time.

He asked Beth, the woman who owns the shop he’s been getting the flowers at, and he trusts her judgment implicitly. It’s definitely seven.

Eddie opens the door, like normal. Bucks lowers the flowers enough that they can see each other over them, which is also normal, and then Eddie grins at him and leans in and Buck’s last thought is that someone should call 911, because his heart just stopped in his chest. 

Eddie is-

Eddie is bending down and bringing his nose close to the flowers, stuck in Buck’s numb hands. 

He takes a deep sniff, which was probably his intention all along. He hums appreciatively and the world lurches back into its usual slow spin, time restarts, and Buck’s heart resumes beating at something approximating a normal rhythm for a living human being, except for how it’s way too loud, thundering in his ears, because okay. This is okay. It’s okay, but maybe it’s time for some self-reflection after all, because oh, oh God, he just-

“Buck. _Buck_.” Eddie’s concerned tone pierces through Buck’s haze of confusion, but it’s the firm touch to his shoulder that really brings him back. Eddie’s eyes are big with worry under his furrowed brow. Big and brown and very pretty, which Buck’s been noticing for a while now, in hindsight. Salt-N-Peppa’s Whatta Man plays in the back of his mind like he’s hearing it through a tinny phone speaker.

“Uh, yeah,” Buck says, more stutter than words. He gives a weak laugh and tries again. “Sorry. Just zoned out for a bit there. All good now.”

Eddie doesn’t take his hand from Buck’s shoulder. The opposite: he gives it a squeeze and keeps peering into Buck’s eyes, like direct eye contact from up close while his best friend is offering him a bouquet that for some reason contains red roses for the seventh week in a row doesn’t scare him one bit. “You sure?”

Buck makes a sound that might be best described as a hysterical giggle, so he pushes the roses and assorted other flowers at Eddie as a distraction. “These need water.”

Eddie takes them, throws Buck a last suspicious look and heads for the kitchen, where the vase he’s been using is waiting on the counter next to the tap.

*

So maybe, just _maybe_ , spending hundreds of dollars on floral arrangements for Eddie wasn’t as much of a tiny meaningless prank as Buck had talked himself into believing it was. Maybe right from the start he’s kind of wanted Eddie to take those expensive flowers from him, throw them to the floor and ravish Buck until he’s liquid enough to be poured into a vase instead.

But who could have known, really?

*

“Of course we all knew,” Hen says. She sounds like she’s seriously questioning Buck’s mental abilities while she’s also endeared against her better judgment, like she’s watching a three-legged puppy hobble across a room. You know it’s actually really sad, but you can’t help but want to pet its little head.

Buck does not want his head petted. He wants to moan and complain and sink to the floor. He contents himself with a groan and with banging his skull on the table he’s dramatically slumped over. “Then how did I not see it?”

“I don’t know, man,” Chim says. He’s acting a lot less like he thinks Buck is adorable for hurting himself in his confusion, but he’s not wholly without sympathy. “It’s like a superpower. You got bit by a radioactive donkey and now you’re oblivious enough for at least ten people.”

“Twenty,” Hen says, which makes Buck raise his head to give her the stink eye, because he thought she was on his side. He never really gets around to putting the full force of his glare on her, because the lack of table pressing into his forehead seems to cause some unexpected and frightening clarity to rush in.

“Oh my God, does _Eddie_ know? You said you all knew, so does that mean-” He falls silent in horror. 

Hen shakes her head. “That, _I_ don’t know. It feels like he should, but you say he hasn’t responded at all to these flowers you’ve been showering him in?”

“I mean, he likes them.” Briefly, Buck fears he’s gotten even that all wrong and secretly Eddie has hated everything about the flowers from the very beginning and Buck has been making an even bigger fool of himself than he’s come to realize over the past twenty-four hours, but then he remembers the way Eddie smiled at him for every single one of the bouquets. It’s butterfly-inducing. There’s no faking that. “I think he enjoys it when I give them to him. But he’s never asked why I was doing this or said anything that made me think about it any deeper.”

Chimney chews his eternally present gum thoughtfully. “How did this madness even get started?”

With the initial adrenaline of dear-Lord-does-Eddie-know ebbing away, Buck sags on the table a little more fully again. This is not getting them anywhere. “He made a joke about me not having to bring him flowers when he asked if I realized we were basically dating.”

It’s quiet. Quiet enough that Buck jerks his eyes up to Hen and Chimney, only to catch them in the middle of sharing a meaningfully incredulous look right over his head.

“What?”

“He said you were basically dating?” Chim asks. “Those were his words?”

“Yeah,” Buck says, feeling something niggle at the back of his brain. It’s uncomfortable.

Hen puts a hand on his arm. “ _Buck_ ,” she says, in a way that conveys more than a rant or literal kick in the ass ever could, and it’s enough to give that something in the back of his brain the final push to make it click into the bigger picture that he missed because he’s been so focused on all the flowery details surrounding it.

He shoots up straight, Hen’s hand dropping away. “Fuck. Oh, fuck.”

“I think he gets it,” Chimney stage whispers at Hen, but Buck is not listening anymore, because he’s hopping off his barstool and trying to set a new speed record for racing down the stationhouse stairs. He’d have jumped the single floor distance if he didn’t have way too much personal experience with what a pain leg injuries can be for every part of your life and relationships and sense of self-worth.

He still considers taking the risk for a second, though.

He locates Eddie in the bunk room. Eddie is not sleeping, but sitting up against the headboard of one of the beds and reading a book, and the room is empty save for the two of them. Buck thanks whatever deity is listening for small mercies. “No,” he tells Eddie.

Eddie, who looked up in alarm when Buck somewhat explosively entered the room, now melts into regular confusion. He closes his book and sits up on the edge of the bed, feet on the floor. “What?”

“No,” Buck repeats. “I never think about how we’re basically dating.”

“Oh, right.” Eddie blinks. “That’s fine.” He keeps his spine straight and his face impassive, and it would probably fool anyone who knows him less well than Buck does. To Buck, all it does is scream right in his face that Eddie is drawing on military discipline to hide something, which in turn spurs him to keep going.

He sits down heavily next to Eddie on the mattress. “I don’t, because at first I didn’t even realize it was happening, and then I got run over by the clue bus and now all my time goes into wishing we were _actually_ dating.”

“Oh,” Eddie says again, but it has a different tone. His face and posture have softened up, too. He’s fully turned towards Buck. “Well. That’s-”

“Don’t say fine,” Buck pleads. “If you say fine again I’m going to- I don’t even know. Set something on fire just so I’ll have something to fight.”

“Don’t,” Eddie advises, still almost eerily calm. “Arsonist firefighter is never a good look, and I kinda like having you around.”

Hope flares up in Buck’s- Well, everything. Crown to toe, he’s all in, because he doesn’t know how he kept trying to convince himself he was offering Eddie just a little (and eighty bucks a week) and was totally content with that. “You do?”

Eddie looks at him, also head to toe, and suddenly he’s shaking his head and laughing. It still sounds like music to Buck. “You really are an idiot, aren’t you?”

“Sure,” Buck agrees easily, because there are ways to be called that which he couldn’t mind even if he tried. “Can I be your idiot?”

*

If Eddie kissing him until the bell rings and they have to pretend they’re not both suspiciously flushed and flustered when they get on the truck wasn’t enough of an indication, Buck definitely gets his answer the next day. When he gets to work and opens his locker, there’s a bouquet of pure red roses with a single yellow lily, orange gerbera and blue iris in the center carefully squished on top of his gear. It makes him grin like mad.

Hen, standing at her own locker, produces an appropriately impressed sound, undercut only slightly by the fact that she’s laughing as she does it. “Secret admirer, Buckaroo?”

“Not exactly a secret,” Chim quips.

Buck ignores them both and goes upstairs, where Bobby helps him find a bowl in the kitchen that’s big and sturdy enough to keep standing in the face of two dozen red roses and three other flowers, and then Buck puts them on the table in the TV area and slings his arm over the back of the couch and lets it fall around Eddie’s shoulders, who’s waiting for him, to admire the flowers together.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Buy your friends flowers, if you want, but remember to critically examine from time to time whether you might be in love with them. Also remember that comments are always welcome (and much cheaper than flowers)! 
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com/). 🌺❤


End file.
